Ecuador Constitution Grants Rights to Nature

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Constitutional rights for trees? That’s just the epitome of Liberal Fascism.

(Anyone wanna ask about the Ecuadorean Gov’t’s position on abortion?)

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What did they get in return from Nature?

Will this slow down resource exploitation and reduce man’s negative impacts on worldwide ecosystems?

Not much, unless many more countries can adopt and enforce. This will make resources more expensive and the cost to reproduce will rise, slowing the birth rate and eventually lowering human population and its impacts.

Now let us hope it is not too late.

Best,

D

Oh boy, brace yourself for a wave of cynical “realists” who are going to claim that this kind of idealism is fomented by communists and radical environmentalists. Nature has rights? The pro-growth, “dril baby drill” activists and cheerleaders see that as equivalent to dancing with Satan in the forests of Salem Massachussetts…..

Me, I say RIGHT ON! Protect the earth and its precious cargo – abundant and diverse LIFE !

Will be interesting to see which country – sovereign state – becomes the first “green” oasis – since such a move would make it a huge attraction to tourists; as well as a place to live. In the mean time, will settle for such initiatives stateside, town by town.

Since the 1980’s Ecuador has had officially a strong position on environmental defense. There is a widespread environmentalist consciousness in the country. Ecuadoreans themselves could have written their constitution without the assistance of Pennsylvanians. But, what the country needs is assistance implementing the law. The country does not exist in isolation; oil companies in the Amazon region and tourism in Galapagos have done a great deal of damage. In addition, of course, the needs and demands of the national population for drawing benefit from the international economy have stimulated careless entrepreneurship, such as the production of lumber with the inevitable destruction of the national forest preserves with the use of simple and cheap chain saws. If Ecuador’s example could be followed by other countries of South America (Brazil, particularly) some regional commitment for the defense of the environment might bring about concerted action of benefit to the people of the smaller and bigger nations.

What’s the difference between this (silly act) and casting any religion in stone in the constitution of a sovereign nation? Absolutely none….

As a neighboring Peruvian, I think this is a one step-forward, two-steps back move.
Our friends from the north are apparently taking the lead in efforts for conservation, however, the new Constitution, with its outer shell of “raising pensions for the poor” and “prohibiting discrimination based on sexual orientation” just sets Pres. Correa up for re-reelection (Fujimori anyone?).
How can we expect the new rights given to nature be respected, where a potentially new dictatorship won’t even respect the rights of its people?

When I saw the headline, I interpreted it a bit differently: that Ecuador had acknowledged that all of us, being created equal, had an equal right to the bounties of nature, and that thus, the right of all of Ecuador’s citizens to share in the economic value of Ecuador’s natural and community-created resources was being affirmed.

Alaska has the Alaska Permanent Fund, which for the past 30 or so years has collected some fraction of Alaska’s oil revenue and invested it in a broadly diversified portfolio and and provided, from the dividends of that portfolio, an annual income to every qualifying permanent resident of Alaska. That income will continue long after Alaska’s oil runs out.

There was talk that one of the reasons America has troops in Iraq was to ensure that at some point, every man, woman and child in Iraq would receive their per capita share of the oil revenues of that country. Haven’t heard much about it lately.

But even more valuable than natural resources like oil is the value of urban land. There is an acre in midtown Manhattan rumored to be worth over $500,000,000 — as a teardown. It is owned by a foreign corporation, and when they sell it, they will have $500,000,000 or more of New Yorkers’ labor in their portfolio — and that is from just one well-located acre!

Urban land, while not part of nature in the sense that I assumed Ecuador’s policy was speaking, is rightly our common resource, and its value should be in the public coffers, not in private portfolios.

Think how many dumb taxes we could get rid of, if we socialized land rent — that is, treated it, instead of wages, as our common treasure.

Our earth is a well-provisioned ship, and the people of each country, having been created equal, are equally entitled to the value of its natural and community resources — and equally entitled to keep that which they individually produce.

The new Ecuadorian Constitution, as I have read it, is an authoritarian, centralist and abortionist one:
It concentrates most powers on the executive branch by controlling, in an undemocratic way, inalienable rights such as freedom of speech, right to privacy, and freedom of the press.
It cuts most ties with the private sector, and by the same token, it nationalizes these companies.
It stupidly acknowledges “5 genders”, rather than 2 [male and female]. One thing is to acknowledge different sexual orientation -as there actually are-, than to acknowledge 5 different genders -when there are only 2!
It does not defend and guarantee life FROM conception -hence it gives right to abortion.
It trivializes and eventually negates cities’ autonomy, where all cities’ production goes straight to the government to later be “equally” distributed nationwide.
It has created an impossible and unrealistic economic plan that heroically and, by means of magic, pretends to provide for all the Ecuadorian people, when in actuality economists nationwide, that have studied the plan, have consistently said this plan is burdensome, and unrealistic given the production and the economy of the country.

In other words, this constitution is a utopia that pretends to adapt a bad copy of socialism as its main ideology, when really what Mr. Correa is doing is not socialism, but rather totalitarianism.

While there may be some good articles as you have mentioned here (nature’s inalienable rights), there are many more that are just the opposite. For this reason, it is childish and ignorant to believe that this new constitution is going to be Ecuador’s savior. Sadly, and by contrast, it seems this constitution and its main promulgator are set to doom the country.

A lot will depend on what the word “nature” means in their language. OTOH if the goverment has total power, it means whatever the government wants. It is not healthy in totalitarian regimes, to be right when the government is wrong.
I wonder whether their iterpretation will include birds, grass hoppers, rats, cows, cucaratchas, etc.

Nowhere in the U.S. Constitution are individual rights given to corporations, but that is today the interpretation of the law and the Constitution, especially by fake “original intention” justices.

The point is that even fundamental laws are malleable.